We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
As foundation money for overseas research grows more difficult to obtain, historians of Africa will perforce seek archival resources closer to home. A rough listing of African materials in American archives has been published, the Handbook of American Resources for African Studies, but the catalog evidently relied in part on reports written by American archivists who had little or no training in African history. As a result many available sources have been inadequately described. Take the case of the Southern Historical Collection, a repository for private manuscripts at the University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill. Although several collections with African papers in this repository are briefly noted in the Handbook, there was no indication of important materials like the forty-page eyewitness description of the court of the Mijjerteyn Sultan written in 1878. Nor, for that matter, is this account noted in the unpublished description of the papers available at the Collection; in fact, even if a researcher should ask, the archivist probably could not readily locate the account unless the researcher already had a name and date for it.
The Southern Historical Collection holds three kinds of documents relating to Africa: (1) The Khedive of Egypt hired several former Confederate officers to conduct mapping expeditions in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia when he began his military conquests to the south in the 1870s. These officers' papers consist of letters, diaries, and printed material concerning their explorations and their daily lives in Cairo. (2) Several groups of papers contain information on missionary activities, mostly by Episcopalians, in Liberia from 1829 to 1880, and (3)there are a number of scattered items in various collections, mainly travelers' accounts of brief visits to Africa.
I would like to express my thanks to the staff of the Southern Historical Collection for their assistance, especially the Director, Dr. Carolyn Wallace, and Reference Archivist, Dr. Richard Shrader. Also thanks to Dr. Thomas Q. Reefe for his helpful comments on this manuscript.
1. Duignan, Peter, Handbook of American Resources for African Studies (Stanford, 1967).Google Scholar
2. Hesseltine, William B. in The Blue and Gray on the Nile (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar has followed the military careers of these Confederate officers using the papers in the Southern Historical Collection. However, he has little to say about Africans or African armies.
3. General Report of the Kordofan. Submitted to General C.P. Stone … by H.G. Prout … (Cairo, 1877).Google Scholar
4. For this group see Cruttenden, Charles J., “Report on the Mijjertheyn Tribe of Somalis Inhabiting the District Forming the North East Point of Africa,” Transactions of the Bombay Royal Geographical Society, 7(1846), 111–26Google Scholar, and Hess, Robert L., Italian Colonialism in Somalia (Chicago, 1966), passim.Google Scholar
5. Blosser, Susan Sokol and Wilson, Clyde Norman Jr., eds., The Southern Historical Collection, A Guide to Manuscripts (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Library, 1970)Google Scholar; Smith, Everard H. III, ed., The Southern Historical Collection, Supplementary Guide to Manuscripts, 1970–1975 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Library, 1976).Google Scholar Both volumes are available from the Southern Historical Collection for $9.00, or $7.00 and $2.50 separately.
